Scrabble in the Future

I just finished reading The Handmaid's Tale, a really terrifying book about a near-future totalitarian regime in which women are basically slaves and they aren't allowed to read or write. While I've said before that people should be able to separate sex and love, this is a society where that's been done to a ridiculous extreme-- to the point of eliminating love altogether. Yikes! Even though it's scary, it's a great book and I read the whole thing in 2 days, which is very rare for me. It has a lot to say about sexual politics, but after I wrote an entry about asexuals liking Scrabble, I just had to post this quote from the book. In it, the handmaid/narrator is summoned by the master of the household. They're alone together, which is against the law:

What had I been expecting, behind that closed door, the first time? Something unspeakable, down on all fours perhaps, perversions, whips, mutilations? At the very least some minor sexual manipulation, some bygone peccadillo now denied him, prohibited by law and punishable by amputation. To be asked to play Scrabble, instead, as if we were an old married couple, or two children, seemed kinky in the extreme, a violation in its own way.
-155

It's funny how things depend on the situation...and I hope this was a silly-enough silly post!